i) In both Keyan’s and Faith’s stories, the normative narrative is that ballet and dancing is a women's sport, and you have to dress and look a certain way for it. While my own story is not about dance, some aspects can relate to the external appearance that dancers must keep up with. I was able to relate to both of these stories because when I was young I danced, and I hated sitting through the hair and makeup process. Even as a child, the idea of changing the way I looked for the benefit of other people was unsatisfactory for me.
One of the similarities I noticed in both of their works was the idea of the appearance. One of the prevalent ideas is dancers wearing pink. Faith writes in their first paragraph “I’ve always hated the colour pink,”(Haberstock 2021). When I was young and in dance, we were all supposed to wear leotards of the same color, and we all wore pink. Like Faith, I didn’t enjoy wearing the color. Keyan elaborates on the usage of pink in dance classes when they wrote “each student will wear a pink tutu and ballet shoes,” and “all the students wear pink,” (Ding 2021). Furthermore, Faith writes about the makeup dancers have to wear and how it makes her feel uncomfortable, shown when they write “One thing that has always separated me from other girls is the fact that I never ever wear make-up. I just don’t like it. .... It makes me uncomfortable,” (Haberstock 2021). In my own self-story, I talked about shaving my legs and how uncomfortable it makes me. I wrote “I felt so uncomfortable I started to cry as I shook off the hairs I had taken from my legs in the running stream of water”, (Bright 2021). I know from my own experience in dance that you are expected to shave your legs once you reach a certain age group or wear tights, and any person who wears tights with unshaved legs knows how the fabric pulls at the hair.
These stories reproduce the idea that to be a dancer you have to look a certain way. You need to wear pink, wear lots of makeup, and do things that make you uncomfortable. Faith writes in their story “ I had a dance examination coming up and that required a perfect face of make-up and a perfect bun,” (Haberstock 2021). which corroborates this narrative, which relates to what I wrote in my story when I wrote "bringing the .... emotional sting of changing what felt right for someone else'', (Bright 2021). In our textbook, Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo writes “girls’ play is focused primarily on selfgrooming,” (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2017), which Faith confirms in their self-story. The idea of using make-up in dance and performance has been around for the majority of the history of theatre. Make-up was a way to transform the actor so they could play a character, specifically men so they could play the role of women. Nowadays, dancers wear makeup on stage so audience members who are farther away from the stage can see their facial features, but this is another example of a normative narrative, because male dancers aren’t expected to wear the same makeup as female dancers.
ii)
A story that disrupts this narrative is Gavin’s story Dancing Differently. Gavin states in his story that “My local dance club at this point only had one male competitive dancer, me,” (Fitch 2021). This differs from Keyan’s story wherein “the boy was taken away by his parents crying,” (Ding 2021) for wanting to dance. In Gavin’s story, he mentions how people often associate male dancers with being a part of the LGBTQ+ community and how people use microaggressions against the LGBTQ+ community by saying things like “That sport is so girly and gay,” (Fitch 2021). Hortense Smith writes in the Jezebel article “Girls Are Pink, Boys Are Blue: On Toddlers And Gender Roles,” we read for class “One wonders, however, how much influence a child's peers have on their understanding of, and adherence to, gender roles,” (Smith 2010). Other children’s comments affecting whether someone continues with something because it doesn’t fit in their “gender role” is something Gavin mentions when he writes “Comments like these mixed with the fact that I was the only boy participating in the sport made me think I should really quit the sport,” (Fitch 2021). The previously assumption about male dancers being gay was briefly explored in the “Dance Moms” Season Eight finale, entitled New York Nationals, where Tricia Farrar talks about her son Brady, and how she gets frequently asked if Brady is gay (Collins & Chriss, 2019). Like in competitive dance, a male dancer’s story can overshadow a woman’s. It is rare for a man to do competitive dance, so judges will score them higher to encourage them to continue dancing. Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo writes in our textbook “Girls and women in sports are not taken seriously in the mainstream culture,” (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2017), so, when it comes to stories about men and women dancers, men’s stories will be told more because they want to show additional attention to male dancers so they continue with sport. Gavin’s story about being called gay because he’s a dancer, would be told more frequently than Faith’s story about not liking wearing make-up, because from the perspective of an adult, Faith would be whining because all dancers have to wear make-up, despite her own feelings about it, and Gavin would be the poor boy who may quit dance because of the comments, when there’s already so few boys in dance and “while a man can’t experience sexism, he can be limited by gender roles” (Bonasi 2006). Gavin expressed in his self-story that he was performing the opposite of gender role and faced discrimination for it; he felt limited because “I was playing the direct opposite position of what I was supposed to play as a boy,” (Fitch 2021).
Differing stories can be true, because it all depends on perspective. For example, in Louisiana in 1918 and 1919, the Axeman of New Orleans left many victims alive, and some had differing stories about the killer’s height. Both stories could be true, because if Victim A’s bed is lower to the ground, the Axeman would appear taller than he would to Victim B, who has a bed higher up from the ground. When analyzing stories you have to take in perspective to disrupt the bias you would be looking at it with otherwise. Without Victim B’s perspective in my previous example, the Axeman would seem like a giant man and much more terrifying and further perpetuate the rumors that the Axeman is a supernatural being. Sometimes you also have to take in someone’s previous experiences when analyzing stories and the normative narratives they believe. Someone who believes in the supernatural entirely and claims to be psychic and seen ghosts will fully believe that the Axeman could be supernatural, but someone who vehemently disagrees and doesn’t like that ghosts or spirits exist would believe that the Axeman is just a man with an axe. The latter person's beliefs don’t erase the former, but when analyzing their stories, you have to remember what each person believes and what they’ve experienced.
Bonasi, S. A. (2007, October 19). FAQ: What is “sexism”? [web log]. https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/sexism-definition/.
Bright, J. (2021, March 14). Self-Story Four: The Fire Pit [web log]. https://jorgiabright.wixsite.com/jorahbright/post/self-story-four-the-fire-pit.
Collins, J. (2019, August 27). New York Nationals. Dance Moms. episode, Pittsburgh, Pennslyania; LifeTime.
Ding, K. (2021, March 16). Self Story#4 Blue Ballet [web log]. https://edusites.uregina.ca/keyan/2021/03/16/self-story4-blue-ballet/.
Fitch, G. (2021, March 15). Self Story #4: Dancing Differently [web log]. https://edusites.uregina.ca/gavinfitch
Haberstock, F. (2021, March 16). Perfect Face of make up (Self Story 4) [web log]. https://edusites.uregina.ca/fhaberstock/2021/03/16/perfect-face-of-make-up/.
Sensoy, Ö., & DiAngelo, R. J. (2017). Is everyone really equal?: an introduction to key concepts in social justice education. Teachers College Press.
Smith, H. (2013, June 20). Girls Are Pink, Boys Are Blue: On Toddlers And Gender Roles. Jezebel. https://jezebel.com/girls-are-pink-boys-are-blue-on-toddlers-and-gender-r-5561837.